1Radiology,
Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis, MO, United States; 2Departments
of Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, United
States; 3Neurology, Washington University in St. Louis, Saint
Louis, MO, United States; 4Hope Center of Neurological disorders,
Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis, MO, United States

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has been successfully
used to quantify directional diffusivities of coherent white matter tracts
and perform tractography. However, DTI cannot model crossing fibers and
subvoxel partial volume effect due to increased cellularity and
extra-cellular space. Diffusion basis spectrum imaging (DBSI) has recently
been proposed to overcome DTI limitations. Preliminary phantom and animal
studies have suggested that DBSI not only resolved crossing fibers, but also
computed directional diffusivities of each crossing fiber and quantified
subvoxel partial volume effect. In this study, we reported the first
application of DBSI to normal human brain and demonstrated DBSI utilities
mapping white matter connectivity and quantifying multiple diffusion
components along fiber tracts.